Over the years, many of my students have asked this question :”I find balancing poses difficult, what can i do to improve?”

There are few aspects to balancing poses and i will try to address them here. First of all, if you are a beginning yoga practitioner, the likelihood is, balancing will feel challenging.There are several reasons for this.

1. The physical side of balancing:

Standing balancing poses will challenge your entire body; some muscles will need to contract, some act as stabilizers. The balancing poses will quickly let you know if there is any misalignment in the body, if some muscles are weaker or tighter.

So next time you practice your Tree pose (Vrksasana) or Extended Big Toe (Utitha Padangustasana), become aware of your body from foundations up:

In standing poses, your feet are your foundations. Proper foot alignment is paramount in standing balances. Before you practice a standing balance, where you are balancing on one foot, come to the Mountain Pose (Tadasana) first. Place your feet together, heels slightly apart, so the outer edges of the feet are parallel. If you are a complete beginner or have problems with your knees/hips, standing with feet separated (a little less than hip width apart) may be beneficial. Then lift your toes off the floor and spread them wide, and plant them back to the floor, maintaining the length in your toes. If you can, close your eyes for a moment to feel the broad earth under you. Notice if any part of the foot/feet is feeling heavier than the rest. Then micro-move side to side just a millimeter each way to feel the weight shifting, until you sense the weight distributed equally across the feet and:

- your big toes are planted securely down

- the weight is distributed equally between the base of the big toes, little toes, outer edges and across the heels

- if your inner arches feel heavy, lift them lightly, if the big toes are coming off the floor, your arches may be lifting too much.

- sense your pelvis, belly and lower back. If your belly is pulling you forward and the lower back feels tense, lightly lengthen the tailbone towards the earth to create space in your lower back, to bring pelvis into neutral position. (the pubic bone will shift slightly forward) But do not force your tailbone down, and do not over-tuck!

- let your spine lift to create space between your vertebrae, let the shoulders widen away from each other to create space in your chest

- micro – move your head back and forth until you sense your head floating lightly on your neck, without feeling heavy on your neck. If you neck doesn’t feel relaxed, check whether your head is too far forward or back.

2. The mind stuff:

There will be days when you will be able to stay in your standing balances for ages, other days, it is just not going to happen, right? Yes, to a point.

Our mind affects our balance. The more serene the mind is, the easier it will be to balance. So if you had a very stressful day, balancing in the tree pose may seem impossible.

The more impossible it seems, the more you try, the more you end up wound up about not being able to do it.

So what can you do to bring about mental relaxation?

Give your mind something to focus on. If concentrating on the body that won’t balance stresses you out even more, give it something else.

Give it breath. It’s not entirely true perhaps to say that mind should focus on the breath but for our purposes, we’ll keep it so to make things simple. (if you would like to discuss the whole mind and breath stuff privately, please email me)

Focusing on the breath will bring you into the present moment.

(you may recall one of my favourite quotes from the classes – ”We can not be aware of our breath and think at the same time” – Eckhart Tolle)

And very often, in our balancing poses, we stop breathing alltogether for a while or the breath becomes shallow – this could be an indication that your mind and body are striving too hard to balance.

Being aware of your breath will naturally quieten the mind, meaning that your thoughts will stop racing. The more you are aware of your breath, the more natural and deeper your breath will become.

3. The eyes:

Your body will naturally follow your eyes. If your eyes are relaxed and serene, so will be your balancing.

There is a beginners trick that you may already have tried – focusing on something at your eye level whilst balancing can keep your balance going. Maybe you would like to try something else instead. Allow your eyes to be relaxed, soften them, as if you were taking a back step and observing from distance. Imaging your visual perception move to the back of your head. Let your eyes be naturally drawn to a space ahead or slightly down, wherever they intuitively lead your gaze is where you rest them.